Parents Aren't Worried About Facebook Privacy, Partly Because They Don't Understand It

Facebook is in the news yet again over privacy concerns today. These issues are a constant topic of discussion in the tech media, but it's less clear how much of the uproar ever filters down to the average user.

So it's great timing for TRUSTe to drop the results of a recent survey (PDF) on how teens and their parents use social networks, and what they think about privacy issues related to them.

The main takeaways from the survey:

The vast majority of teens and their parents are comfortable with privacy on social networks, and nearly all parents think their teens use social networks responsibly.

On the other hand, parents feel pretty strongly that it should be impossible for their teens to share as much information as they can as broadly as they can. So it looks like parents don't understand Facebook privacy as well as they think they do.

Most parents monitor their teens' online behavior closely, and want full control over what their teens share. A full 10% even admitted to secretly obtaining login access to their teens' accounts.